MERTHYR will hope their days of struggling to get three points at home are well and truly over after convincingly dispatching Didcot.

The Martyrs have produced some sparking performances on the road this season and suffered their only two league defeats at Penydarren Park.

So the thought of a hat-trick of defeats was something management duo Garry Shephard and Danny Carter did not want to contemplate.

It is fair to say that some of the playing surfaces Merthyr have travelled to have been more conducive to their attractive style of football but the reality is that Merthyr will face another 16 league games on Penydarren Park this season.

And having been such a fortress for them in recent seasons the sooner their poor run was put to bed the better. Matthew Harris opened the scoring for Merthyr on 36 minutes and that did a great deal to settle the home team who added a second through Jason Welsh and a third from Nathan Davies within eight minutes of the re-start.

More could and maybe should have followed while Giles Cutlan denied the visitors a late consolation with a couple of decent stops.

For Shephard it was a relief to get back to winning ways and he gave the credit to the players although it was noticeable that Merthyr dispensed with the three centre-backs for the first time and reverted to a more traditional flat back four.

“The players were obviously nervous after losing the last two here,” he said.

“But they worked hard to build a platform and the first goal then really settled them down.”